Thursday, August 22, 2013

Letter from ECFC President, Steve Tanaka

August 21, 2013

Welcome back, everyone!

I hope each of you got to spend some quality time this summer with your
families, become rejuvenated, and are ready for the fall season! We are well
positioned to have a fun and successful fall with Residence Camp kicking off
preparations for the league play and team training starting on a regular basis
for all our teams.

I have written this newsletter to keep you apprised of the club’s summer
activities and developments, including our performance and areas of need. As in
prior newsletters, many of these items are informational. There are also some
areas in which we are looking for support, so please take the time to read and
consider them.

Club
Performance

Tournament Play

This summer, we had teams from all levels of our
club produce quality results during tournament play. Our emphasis has always
been on developing players and giving them the requisite skills to be
successful, yet it is always gratifying to see positive competitive results in
addition to quality play. To highlight a few:

Topping the list is our M95 Green team (U-18
boys coached by David Smith) which qualified to compete in the National Premier
League (NPL) Champions Cup in Aurora, Colorado. This tournament crowned the NPL
national champion. The M95s competed very well and we want to congratulate them
on being recognized as one of the top teams in the country.

The F96 Green team (U-17 girls coached by
Amanda Potts Huppert) also performed well in their summer tournaments. These
girls were semi-finalists in both the US Club Regional tournament and the Mt.
Hood Challenge, two prestigious and highly-competitive tournaments in the
Pacific Northwest.

On the other end of the spectrum, the M04/05
(U-8/9 boys coached by Angel Planells) were tournament champions and the F03/04
(U-9/10 girls coached by Todd Schilperoort) were finalists in their respective
Gold Divisions of the Westsound Summer Classic. What a tremendous performance by
some of our youngest members!

Congratulations to all of our teams on their
performance this summer!

Residence Camp

Last week, 71 Emerald City FC players and 8
coaches, staff, and chaperones participated in our annual Residence Camp. This
mid-August camp offers a special opportunity for our players to gain
concentrated fitness, sports psychology, goal-setting, teambuilding, and
targeted soccer skill training, in addition to having great fun. The four-day
camp was held at scenic Camp Casey on Whidbey Island. It gave our players a jump
start for the fall league season, and, in the case of our high school girls,
great preparation for their high school tryouts and high school season. Our
coaches noted that many of our players exhibited tremendous growth, and feedback
from families was exceptionally positive. One of my own daughters has already
asked me to mark it on next year’s calendar!

I would like to extend a special thank you to Ruth
Nicholson whose contributions directly related to the success of the camp. She
was instrumental in the planning, negotiating, and facilitating of the camp
experience, and we are all grateful for her diligence and attention to detail.
Thank you, Ruth.

Additionally, I would like to thank Alisa Artis
(F98/F01 parent) for volunteering to chaperone the kids during Residence Camp.
Her contributions were also invaluable as she ably assisted Ruth in many of the
logistical issues of Camp and was the main “homesickness” counselor for some of
our younger campers. Thank you, too, Alisa!

Alumni Performance Notes

It is always nice to hear of the accomplishments
of our alumni because it gives further credence that we are developing strong
players and citizens. Recently, two of our alumni have received special
attention:

DeAndre Yeldin, Seattle Sounders FC, became
the first true rookie since 2005 to be named to the MLS All-Star team. DeAndre
also participated on the US Men’s National Team in the U-19 World Cup and
performed very well.

Aaron Kovar, Stanford University, who, as a
freshman, was named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and to the All-Pac-12 Second
Team, was more recently named to the College Soccer News Preseason All-America
Second Team and to Top Drawer Soccer's Preseason Best XI Second Team.

Notes from the Board of Directors

In June, ECFC held its Annual General Meeting at which the election of new
board members took place. I am pleased to announce that Kerry Bauman was elected
as a new member of the board. Kerry is a biologist who brings two years of
volunteer board experience with her and is a valuable addition to our team.
Welcome Kerry!

At our August board meeting, the election of officers took place. These are
your board officers for the 2013-2014 playing year:

We are facing a number of challenges in light of the tremendous growth that
the club has experienced in the past year. Therefore, we are actively looking
for volunteer help within Emerald City FC in two major areas. Please contact me
at president@emeraldcityfc.org
to discuss your interests and willingness to help our club.

Board Member: We have one vacant
board seat. Board members oversee the strategic, financial, and legal aspects of
the club and provide support to club staff, including the operations, financial,
and coaching staff. The open position carries a two-year commitment which will
expire in June of 2015.

Committee Members: We are now forming
several important committees to identify and implement improvements to key areas
of club operations, including fields and website design. Additional committees
are likely to be added in the coming months. We have begun to compile a list of
people willing to volunteer and an abbreviated statement of their
qualifications. There is no specific term commitment to these committees as
their level of effort and duration will be tied to the specific tasks of each
work group.

Personnel

Brad Agoos, coach of the M02 Green and M98 White teams, has recently taken a
position with the Portland Timbers professional soccer team. This is a very
exciting opportunity for him, and we want to express our congratulations to Brad
for this accomplishment. We are certainly sad to see him go as Brad was rapidly
becoming a vital member of our coaching team. However, just as we strive to
promote our players to the highest possible levels of the game, we also want the
same for our coaches. If you see Brad, please wish him the best.

Brad’s departure has some effects on our team coaching assignments. I am
pleased to announce that Scott Smith has been named as the M02 Green team head
coach and CJ Hamel has been named as the M98 White team head coach.

Club Management

Over the summer, members of the board and our coaching directors evaluated
our coaching organization, including its management hierarchy. We had several
meetings to look at our direction, diversity and range of programs, recent club
growth, staff workload assignments, and the skill sets of our coaching
directors.

As a result of this process, we have concluded that a combination of an
expanded, team-based volunteer program, a more coordinated program management
approach, and a modest restructuring of the coaching hierarchy was the best
course of action to improve our performance.

Starting with the Development team formation meetings in August, team
volunteer positions will be updated and will include new positions such as team
registrar, team events coordinator, and team board representative. The changes
for upper club teams will be staged over the fall season and during team
formation for next year’s teams as appropriate. These new positions are designed
to increase our efficiency, communication, and member connection to the club.

We are working to identify and create process improvements that will better
connect the programs in the club and increase administrative efficiency.

Some positions will remain unchanged in the coaching hierarchy, but a few
additional positional positions are being considered to target specific areas of
need. More information will be available in the coming months and will be noted
in the next club newsletter.

Current and Upcoming Events

Development Team Formation Meetings

Team Formation Meetings for our Fall Development
teams will take place on August 27th at Jane Addams field (the former Summit #1
field across from the Nathan Hale HS stadium) at 5:30 pm and on August 28th at
Miller Playfield at 530 pm. These are very important meetings for our
Development team families and it is highly recommended that all parents attend
at least one. The focus of these meetings is to introduce families to the
Development coaching staff, talk about the Emerald City FC development
philosophy, offer insights and methods for parents to best support their players
for their learning and growth, and to provide information about the upcoming
season.

Deadline for High
School players to register for Sportsworx

August 31st is the deadline for the club to sign
up our players for Sportsworx, the online college research program that we
provide free of charge to our high school-age players. There are several aspects
to Sportsworx which are of tremendous benefit to our members: a college research
tool, a scholarship program which provides thousands of dollars in scholarship
money to select schools simply for being a member of our club, and a fundraising
program for the club which was detailed during the May team formation meetings.
The only prerequisite that Emerald City requires of our high school-age players
to participate in these benefits is that the player must be registered in Korrio
with full payment or a payment plan in place. Please make sure that your child
meets these requirements so that they do not miss out on this tremendous
program. If you have any question that the requirements are met, please call Amy
Wakeman at (206) 713-4656.

Fall Season Play Begins

The first games for the fall season will be during
the weekend of September 7th. The Puget Sound Premier League (PSPL) is in the
process of populating the leagues and schedules will follow shortly thereafter.
You can check the PSPL website for schedules at http://www.pugetsoundpremierleague.com/LS/PSPL_Fall_2013/index_E.html
for your specific teams. Please bear in mind that the home teams are responsible
for scheduling the fields and times for their games, so check back frequently
for changes.

September Board meeting

The next Emerald City board meeting will be held
on Sunday, September 8th at 7:00 pm in one of the party rooms at Arena Sports
Magnuson. Each monthly board meeting is open to all of our members and we fully
encourage our membership to attend. For future planning, our board meetings are
held on the second Sunday of every month and are usually held at the Arena
Sports Magnuson site. Any changes to the board meeting schedule or location will
be posted on the emeraldcityfc.org website.

Board Topics

One of the purposes of this newsletter is to educate our members on
significant and sometimes easily misunderstood topics. Although it would seem
that youth soccer should be a simply-managed activity, in truth, there is a lot
more complexity to the process than meets the eye. This section of my newsletter
is intended to give you more information on some of those complexities. In this
issue, I am covering our philosophy about “Playing Up” and Fields. Upcoming
issues will provide information on being a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization,
the benefits of having highly qualified professional coaches, and the reasons
why volunteerism within the club is so important.

Emerald City FC Philosophy about “Playing
Up”
Over the past few years, we have had a number of players “play up” on an
older team in an older age group. This year, we are placing increased emphasis
on keeping our players in their own age group. This has generated a number of
questions from parents, especially among families whose children had previously
been playing up. Director of Coaching, Erik Oman, has written the following
explanation which I would like to share with you:

Our Emerald City FC coaching staff is
continuously working to stay current with the latest information related to
player development and the technical and tactical evolution of the game. We
strive to always put our players first in every decision that we make for the
club. With our move out of SYSA to become an independent club, we have, in the
past three years, had to rely at times on moving players up to older age groups
to solidify some of our teams in an effort to keep those teams and our club
viable.

Proper player development models rely on
being able to move players up to older teams based on ability, as chronological
age does not necessarily determine ability on the field. Children develop at
very different rates physically, emotionally, socially, technically and
tactically. Keeping players developing properly in the game demands that they
are appropriately challenged on the field while also having the opportunity to
be successful and develop confidence using the skills and tactics that they are
learning. That is why we are working to create a ‘Club’ atmosphere where all of
our teams support one another and our players feel connected to the other teams
in the club.

We welcome the opportunity to move players up
in age groups when it is developmentally appropriate to do so. In fact one of
the big reasons that Emerald City FC plays under the US Club Soccer banner is
the flexibility afforded under the US Club system to move players up as is
appropriate. There are, however, some administrative issues behind the scenes,
including having players listed chronologically for the benefit of college
coaches in the recruiting process, that influence how we go about the rostering
process. For administrative purposes, we will roster all of our players
initially in the age group where they fit chronologically. Then, we will create
the team rosters that reflect where players have been placed
developmentally.

As we continue to grow as an independent club,
we will have fewer and fewer occasions where we will need to have under age
players playing up simply to fill out team rosters. We will continue to welcome
opportunities for younger players to play their way up to older teams with their
performance on the field and it will be at the discretion of our professional
coaching staff to make those recommendations on a case-by-case basis.

Fields

One area in which we receive a great many comments and complaints is fields.
I would like to note that the club gives a huge amount of attention to field
issues. We want the experience of our members to be the best it can possibly be
and we realize that the quality, quantity, and location of fields has a profound
effect on that experience. Addressing field issues and associated problems is of
extremely high importance to the board, club staff, and coaches.

The fields process is detailed and complex.

Emerald City gets the vast majority of its fields from the City of Seattle
Department of Parks and Recreation. The Parks department is responsible for
overseeing all public parks and public school fields within the city limits.
This includes West Seattle, but does not include Shoreline or any of the private
school fields. The Parks department takes requests from any potential users and
has an obligation to allow equal access to all those who request space. However,
in practical terms, field access may not be available to individuals or late
requesters during certain times of the year because of heavy use by athletic
groups such as Emerald City, SYSA, and CYO, lacrosse, youth football, ultimate
Frisbee, and many others.

The Parks department cannot fulfill all of the requests put to them due to
the number of users and a limited number of fields. Its field scheduling program
is an adaptation of an accounting/ billing program and has limited ability to
adapt to changing conditions. Due to these limitations, the method that the
Parks department uses to assign fields is to copy the previous year’s field
allocation for each user as the basis for making the current year’s field
assignments. This method would probably work as well as any if there were no
changes in the user’s needs, but it is quite inadequate to handle the needs of
any growing organization like ours. That means that we regularly need to
formulate and submit supplemental field requests.

This fall, we will have over 450 players playing for Emerald City, an
increase of more than 25% from the same time last year. With such growth,
receiving the same field allocation as we had last year is completely
inadequate. Our current field allocation equates to over 100 players per
training session or about 7-12 teams on the field at a time.

We regularly put in requests for additional fields with the Parks department,
but it is limited in what it can offer us since all of Parks’ fields were
assigned during its initial allocation to users. We have also put in requests
with the Shoreline Parks department, Shoreline schools, University of
Washington, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle University, Starfire Sports
complex, Memorial Stadium, and all private schools that have available fields.
So far, those additional requests have not yielded very many additional fields
for us; however, one of those requests is still under consideration.

This is the reason why we have not been as responsive to putting out our
upcoming field and team training schedules as we would like. Ruth Nicholson, our
scheduler, has been working diligently to prepare the team training schedules,
but I have directed that the schedules not be disseminated while we still have
open possibilities to acquire more fields. While it is inconvenient to not have
the desired two-week notice on upcoming training event locations, it is my
belief that this inconvenience is better than the disruption of multiple changes
and revisions to the monthly schedules after they have been released. In
general, we all know the approximate times that our kids will train and it is
mainly the field venue which we need to know. I’m hopeful that families can deal
better with a late notice of venue, but if this is not the case, please email me
and I will consider a change of policy.

Another concern in this area is the increasing frequency that some other
clubs are poaching fields. This has become a big problem in that it makes a very
uneven playing field for clubs—we are paying for fields and those clubs are not.
While we have the official permit to use the space and can kick those other
users off of the field, many coaches are reluctant to do so, citing our
philosophy of doing things for “the good of the game.” From that perspective, I
can understand their actions, but it must also be looked at in a business
context. Teams utilizing space for which they have not paid are raising our club
fees as we cover for their usage. We may not want to be the “field police,” but
we must protect our own resources. Over the past year, we have spent well over
$14,000 on field rentals. Given such a significant commitment of funds, we need
to make sure that we are not supporting organizations which are not reserving
and paying for fields appropriately.

Obviously, there are several issues that affect our field access and
usage. As mentioned in the Volunteers Needed
section of this newsletter, we are forming a fields committee to research
alternatives, discuss strategies, and make recommendations for our club. Please
give consideration to being part of that team. If you are interested in helping
with this effort, please contact me, Steve Tanaka, at president@emeraldcityfc.org.

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Mission Statement

Emerald City FCexists to develop each of our players to his or her fullest potential, competing at the highest possible level while demonstrating exemplary teamwork, sportsmanship, and a passion for the game.